Present and in working condition
by ChuckNorrisLeftFist
Summary: Updated: Sue "kidnaps" Kurt  by taking him to the mall and promising she'll let him tutor her on facial products  until Blaine captures a lion for her. The Labors of Hercules as Labors of Blaine and Kurt. Pure absolute fluff.
1. Chapter 1

Sue Sylvester had her cameras and spies everywhere. Well, not everywhere, because she certainly didn't want to see William Schuester putting on his hair products or Justin Bieber doing anything except cutting his own toes off while clipping his nails (she had a camera set with very specific triggers to start recording if that happened), but she had Dalton Academy thoroughly covered. The first two canaries, Domingo and Carreras, had failed to agree with her putting transmitters on their beaks, which explained why Kurt was assigned Pavarotti. And he had agreed only because she exploited his addiction to millet sprays.

She hung up from her latest call and wrote a few notes in her diary. "I have taken steps to ensure that Frodo and Porcelain do not damage themselves, each other, or my plans for world domination. I also put Nair in Will Schuester's favorite kind of shampoo at the drug store he frequents. It's been a satisfactory day."

_Three days later._

She was disappointed that Will never came to the school with either no hair or an obvious wig, but then, the traffic jams around the drug store near his house as a long line of newly bald people demanded satisfaction did cause him inconvenience, so it's not as though she wasted the Nair.

_Meanwhile, at Dalton..._

Kurt was starting to worry. Blaine had entirely stopped flirting with him over the last three days and kept giving him CDs and MP3s of 18th and some 19th century vocal music. Wes, David, and the rest of the Warblers talked to him in suddenly more gentle and sympathetic voices and never, ever, talked about their various girlfriends when he was around. They were so fast to change the subject from anything to do with love or sex that sometimes, when he walked into the room, each single one of them started babbling about a different topic. From a vocal rhythm standpoint, it was kind of interesting to listen to. Then there was the time when Wes was telling the rest of the Warblers about accidentally walking in on the music teacher singing Barry Manilow and holding rolled up paper like a microphone, and finished, "I thought he was going to cut off my-" when David shoved him so hard he nearly fell off his chair.

After practice, Wes went to Kurt and apologized.

Kurt frowned in confusion. "Wes, it's not like I've not heard the expression before."

"Blaine was right when he said you've got courage," Wes said, side-hugged him, and walked off.

That was more than enough for Kurt. He went to Blaine's room and opened the door. "Will you finally tell me what's going on?"

Blaine looked at him with the same regretful, sympathetic look he'd been wearing for the last three days. "About what?"

"Why everybody in the Warblers is treating me like I've got some kind of terminal disease and don't know it. About why _you_ have been treating me suddenly like my father and Finn have been threatening you with shotguns, which I know they haven't because I called them and asked." Kurt gulped back tears of frustration.

Blaine got up and pressed Kurt into a warm, comforting hug. "I didn't know, Kurt, when I started flirting with you. And I thought that you...enjoyed it because you flirted back. But your old cheerleading coach told me and I didn't want to keep teasing you."

"Told you what?"

"About your..."

"About my what?" If he'd sung that last note, Kurt would have shattered glass for miles around.

"Your being a...sorry, I don't know what name you prefer for it...your being a castrato. I should have guessed, your power and range and-"

"Blaine. I. Am. Not. A. Castrato."

If Kurt or Blaine had been concentrating on Pavarotti, they'd have heard a voice hissing from his beak, "Why didn't you distract them, you stupid shrunken chicken?"

"You're not? But she said specifically..." Not that Kurt needed more proof that he was in love, but he found Blaine sexy even when he was absolutely dumbfounded and blinking like Finn would if he'd been asked to explain astrophysics to Steven Hawking.

"Blaine, I have no idea why, but Sue Sylvester was lying when she told you I was a castrato." Kurt took a few steps back and smirked. "Want me to show you?"

Blaine excited and happy was pretty sexy, too.


	2. Chapter 2

Sue Sylvester patiently explained, "Sergei, your job is to design that search engine of yours so it will measure _exactly_ which pictures are most drooled over and to send me that list. _My_ job is not to destroy you. At least, if you get me that list today." She listened for a moment to Brin's protests and then cut him short. "Sorry, Sergei, my motto is 'Do be evil.'" She hung up and returned to the copy of Most Beautiful People 2010 and printouts of similar lists.

"Owes me," she muttered as she ticked off a name. "I have photographs." Another check mark. "I have his mother hostage." Another name. She leaned back after a while and sighed in satisfaction. "Twenty is a good round number. Sue Sylvester, you are a pure genius."

Later, she noted in her diary. "I have again demonstrated my capacity for treating others as mere pawns in my manipulations as I continue to ensure that Hobbit and Porcelain do not interfere with my plans or cause themselves or each other the kind of trauma that leads to unnatural disasters like Oprah. How ever did I get to be so awesome? Tomorrow, I shall continue to destroy Will Schuester in the same way that Vesuvius destroyed Pompeii. Red-hot lava shall engulf that ridiculous fungus that he calls hair."

Three days later.

As he approached Kurt's room, Blaine heard a voice with a distinct Chinese accent shouting, "Why did you break up with me, Kurt? Was I not tall enough for you?" He blinked several times. Sure enough, it was Yao Min shaking the handle of Kurt's door.

The basketball player was surrounded by 19 other men, all shouting variations on the same theme. "Why are you hiding from me?" "Kurt, I can change!" "Kurt, I can't live without you!" Blaine recognized each and every one as a famous singer, actor, or simply gorgeous body. He wondered for a moment if he'd wandered into a paparazzo's dream of the perfect Christmas present, given how wildly they were shouting and begging for Kurt to come out and re-establish their relationship. He didn't want to admit that part of the image might have snuck into one or two of his own dreams, that is, dreams before he met Kurt.

That reminded him that as pleasant as the sight was, and as much as he enjoyed the way that Kurt made life that much more interesting, he did want to get to talk to Kurt about their new duet. And not just in the euphemism. "Hey, guys? The paparazzi are coming...and the light here is making your complexions look _terrible_."

Channing Tatum looked nervously over his shoulder. "But...Sue said that if we didn't, she'd..."

Blaine rolled his eyes. He should have known. "It's all right. I'll explain to Sue that you did a great job, exactly what she asked, and that in fact, you did such a great job that she's..." Blaine stopped to think of something that would cover the concept of Sue being satisfied with anything other than herself or her Cheerios. "She's releasing you from your obligations."

The men swarmed off, yelling in relief. Blaine knocked on Kurt's door. "Kurt? They're gone."

Kurt opened the door, smiling a bit sheepishly. "You know, before you, that would have been my perfect dream."

"And now?" Blaine had a very healthy ego, thank you very much, but he still wanted to hear the answer. He didn't even mind that Kurt didn't use words."

Later, they called Sue Sylvester.

"Porcelain, I'm going to explain it quite simply. Trouble and complications follow you like a trail of oil follows Will Schuester's hair. Between us, if Halliburton and KBR ever see that trail, they're going to invade his head faster than my wrath can seek out its target and that, I assure you, is very, very fast.

"My point is that if you and Hobbit Boy can survive the worst that my imagination can throw at you, you'll be fine."

"Uh, Sue, thanks, I guess, but we don't really need-"

"It's not about what you need, Porcelain, but what I want. Always has been, always will be."

Kurt hung up after Sue and turned to Blaine. "Her heart's in the right place. I mean, it's somewhere in her chest. Probably."

"Kurt? Could you _not_ talk about Sue? I really, really want to change the subject."


	3. Chapter 3

**AN:**

**Updates for this fic just stood stagnant for a while at about two paragraphs each until I realized I was doing it all wrong. ;-) It's taking a different twist now, based on the full exposure that I bet kids at Dalton get to Greek mythology.**

**It's specifically the Labors of Hercules, except it's really the Labors of Kurt and Blaine, as Sue continues to interfere, mostly for her own amusement, partly for her to get free labor, but also to make sure that Blaine and Kurt are truly devoted to one another. Hope you enjoy!**

* * *

"Hello?" Blaine Anderson was fairly sure that he hadn't named any of his contacts The Rightful Ruler of the World. But then, having Chemistry as the last period of the day and Wes (who possessed infinite curiosity, no sense of self-preservation, and the clumsiest hands in the continent) as a lab partner meant that he could never trust his perceptions until he'd left the science building. Sometimes even not then.

"Son of Hair Gel?" If he hadn't recognized Sue Sylvester's voice, he would have recognized her from the first words. "Just thought you should know I've kidnapped Porcelain." He blinked for a moment, confused by her conversational tone, and blinked even more at hearing Kurt in the background saying, "I'm fairly certain that the Food Court at the mall is not a standard kidnapper's hideout."

"Er..." In all the movies he'd seen about kidnapping, during the ransom call, you were supposed to keep the kidnappers on the line as long as possible, but then, since he knew the kidnapper, the location, and that the kidnappee was well and snarking, he figured that just expressing confusion was at least being honest and forthright, if not showing off the extensive vocabulary that Dalton was supposed to instill in its students.

"If you want him back-"

"You could just pick me up at the Food Court-"

"Be quiet, Porcelain, or I won't let you give me a facial product tutorial."

Blaine could imagine Kurt shutting up at the prospect. In fact, he was pretty sure he heard Kurt's mouth snap shut with a pop.

"As I was saying before I was so rudely interrupted, if you want Porcelain back, you have to complete a task for me."

"Uh, yes?" _Let's hope I do better than this on the vocabulary part of the SAT. Or at least that Sue Sylvester has nothing to do with the SAT._

"You're going to have to capture a lion."

"Any lion? Or is there a specific one you have in mind?" _Am I actually getting used to Sue Sylvester? I'm feeling pure, concentrated relief that it's only one lion that she wants me to capture. And I'm not even wondering if I'm still too close to the science building._

"It's my neighbor's."

If he were Sue's neighbor, he might get a lion out of self-defense, Blaine decided. He then heard Kurt say, "Coach Sylvester, it is _not_-"

"Leaving now, no tutorial, is that what you want? _IS IT_, Porcelain? _Huh?_"

"No." Kurt's voice was nearly in dog-whistle territory.

"So just capture the lion, get it out of my apartment, get it back to Ms. Nemea, and you'll get Porcelain back."

To think that when David and Wes had asked what his plans for that evening were, he'd said that he was planning to chill, maybe read a bit, maybe not, depending on what he felt like. Hah. Thinking "Hah" didn't express it quite enough, so he said it out loud. "Hah."

* * *

At least on the way to Lima he was able to make up a song. It wasn't exactly polished, but he'd be able to get his voice down deep for the two syllables that ended each verse, and really let it rip during the bridge.

Kurt, my lovely snarking counter-tenor,  
Better looking than most men or  
Women.

I'm out hunting for a lion  
Though I thought it was just an ion  
From Wes.

At the orders of Sue Sylvester  
Who really knows how to pester  
People.

What a dapper man won't do for the man that he adores,  
He'll go hunting a lion, crawling on all fours,  
His love is gonna find you, it'll open all the doors  
That stand between us, he will fight all the wars.

Because he's going to rescue you from Sue Sylvester,  
She might make you wear some polyester  
For my fashion god that wouldn't be a joke or a jest or  
Anything but a wound that would fester.

So that's why I am driving,  
To Lima for a conniving  
Cheer coach.

Now I'm passing a police car,  
You've really made my life by far  
Bizarre.

When he got to Sue's apartment building, he used his phone to research whether hair gel was a lion repellant. Wikipedia was disgustingly uninformative and sadly, in a general internet search, he found that Rule 34 applies even to lions wearing hair gel.

There weren't any police there, there wasn't a nervous crowd (which had to be strange for Sue's neighborhood, maybe she'd kidnapped Kurt straight from school?), and he didn't even hear any roaring. Maybe the lion had gone home after finding only protein shakes at Sue's?

He very cautiously opened the door to Sue's apartment. She had earlier boasted that she didn't need to lock it because sheer terror kept any intruders away. If only this lion were the Cowardly Lion...

"Mrah?"

Blaine looked down. A ginger tabby had emerged from under the sofa and was winding itself around his feet. It looked up at him and repeated, "Mrah?" and purred as it left a few pounds of hair against his dark pants. He cautiously scooped up the tabby and investigated the tag on its collar.

The tag read "Leo." There were initials right below that. "B. Nemea," and right below that, a phone number. Putting the purring cat on the counter, he pulled his phone out again and called the number.

"Ms Nemea? I'm calling from Sue Sylvester's apartment. It looks like your cat got in."

"Leo? Oh, the naughty boy, he does love to go visit the neighbors. I'll come get him right away, the silly thing."

As he hung up, he heard a sudden crackle coming from the living room. There was a bank of monitors on the wall and Sue's face appeared on all of them. Real nightmare fodder. "Well done, Curls."

"Uh, that was the lion?"

"So I exaggerated a little. I'm larger than life, so sue me. Except, of course, that suing me would be a terrible idea. You've fulfilled your part of the bargain and so I'm actually going to surprise you and fulfill mine. I'll let Porcelain give me a tutorial on facial care, he'll be willing to leave then, so the kidnapping will be officially over." She paused. "Just remember. I'm watching you." The monitors all turned off.

"Mrah?"

"I couldn't agree more," Blaine answered the cat.


End file.
